熟能生巧--成语故事英文版

熟能生巧

Practice Makes Perfect

During the Northern Song Dynasty, about 1000 years ago, there was a skilled archer called Chen Yaozi (陈尧咨). One day he drew a big crowd while practicing archery on the drill ground. He shot so accurately that every arrow fired was followed with a roaring response from the crowd. Chen Yaozi was carried away by the applause. He became very proud of his archery skills. But he noticed that among the crowd there was an old oil peddler, who only nodded his head indifferently. This hurt Chen Yaozi's pride. He asked the old man:

"Can you shoot an arrow?"

"No, I can't"

"What do you think of my archery skills, then?"

"It's ok, but nothing special. You've gained your accuracy from persistent practice. That's all. Nothing special."

"Wow! What a tone! So what can you do, old man?"

The old man put a gourd bottle on the ground and covered its mouth with a copper coin that has a small square hole in the middle. He then scooped out a ladle of oil from his big jar, held it high and began to fill the gourd. Now, a thread of oil came down from the ladle into the bottle just through the hole of the coin. Everybody looking on watched with amazement. When the old man emptied his ladle, he showed the crowd the coin. "Can you see any oil marks on this coin?"

They could not, and were about to give him a big cheer, but the old man stopped them.

"This is nothing special either, I can do this because I have practiced it a lot. Practice makes perfect. Nothing to be especially proud of."

And with these words, he left to peddle his oil along the streets.

Later, people use the idiom "Practice makes perfect" to express someone who is skilld in doing something after plenty of practice.